1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a karaoke apparatus for displaying a background image on a monitor in synchronization with music performance of a karaoke song.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication karaoke apparatuses have been widely spread recently. The communication karaoke apparatus stores song data for performing karaoke songs separately from background image data to be displayed on the monitor as the background image together with lyric words of the karaoke song. A background image suitable for a requested karaoke song is selected for reproduction. The conventional karaoke apparatuses normally display moving pictures as background image. These karaoke apparatuses mostly use a Laser Disc (trademark) as a storage medium for storing video data of moving pictures. Recently, however, a karaoke apparatus has been proposed in which a background image reproducing device handles a plurality of video CDs provided as video storage media mainly for the purpose of making the karaoke apparatus compact in size. As a storage medium, the video CD is made compact by recording moving pictures in a compressed form based on MPEG (Moving picture Experts Group) standard.
However, the above-mentioned video CD reproducing device or video CD changer requires to set one video CD on a turn table, to access a specified chapter on the video CD, to read data from the specified chapter, and to expand the MPEG-compressed data. These operations take as long as about 40 seconds from the time at which an instruction for video reproduction is made to the time at which the reproduction actually starts. Therefore, in order to concurrently start the audio performance of a karaoke song and the video reproduction of a background image in synchronization with each other, about 40 seconds of standby or preparatory time is spent or consumed between a request or command to start karaoke performance operation and an actual start of the specified karaoke song. This delay presents a drawback of dampening or discouraging the enthusiasm of karaoke singers to sing.
Another type of the karaoke apparatus utilizes a video mixer which selects one of TV picture, LD (Laser Disc) picture and video camera picture, and which superimposes lyric words of a karaoke song reproduced from CD graphics with the selected background picture. However, in such a karaoke apparatus, the displayed background picture is not associated with the karaoke song at all, thereby discouraging the enthusiasm of karaoke players.
Further, for various types of the karaoke apparatus, the reference is made to prior U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 08/522,714 and 08/537,134, which are owned by the assignee of the present application.